Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) (3 page)

Reagan shifted, feeling the jagged weight that he’d
carried in his chest since the day he’d left the Treaty Cabinet Meeting on
Theta Tersica a lifetime ago. It was the weight of the knowledge that he should
have stopped the sale of Ship 12-22. He had voted against the plan that had
sold the ship to the Others of Beta Alora, and he planted information that he
had hoped David McNeal, the original Caretaker of the ship, would find. But he
hadn’t fought any harder. He had instead climbed on a stasis ship himself and had
done no more to stop the atrocity.

He saw now—and had seen the moment he closed his
eyes in stasis, and for the next fifty-three years as he slept—that he should
have sabotaged the slave ship, should have taken a battleship up and placed it
between the Others and the innocents. Should have made it public. Should have
stood in front of a microphone and shamed the UEG for their decision. He should
have—should have done
something
.

But he hadn’t.

He had consoled himself with the decision’s
seeming necessity and gone to sleep, expecting to awaken with all of it behind
him, a blip on the otherwise bright history of humanity’s colonization.

Only it wasn’t in the past. He lived with the
effects of that decision every day as he saw his daughter lose words she had
once known and people she had once loved. Kaia had forgotten her mother’s name
just weeks ago, and her weeping at its loss had broken Reagan’s heart.

Reagan pulled his gaze from the window.

Nile fixed him with a piercing look, and Reagan
realized he’d been silent a long time.

The sergeant spoke. “Like you say, sir, I hope we
won’t have to worry about defenses. But just in case, I’ll have the troops
ready to show you some maneuvers this afternoon if you’d like.”

Reagan nodded. “And pull your personnel files,
Sergeant. I might as well start the reviews while I wait.”

“Yes, sir.” Nile crossed to the desk and punched
in some codes before leaving the office with a sharp salute to the admiral.

Reagan put a hand impatiently to his head in
response, scolding himself for getting distracted. This was not the time for
parental regrets. He’d spoken to Kaia on the missive an hour ago, and she was
fine today.

What wasn’t fine was the strange spot that had
crossed Lucidus this morning. Reagan knew what it was, even before the Anomaly
Analysis Team walked into his office moments after Nile had left.

“Sir.” The team leader, Lesharo, pushed a length
of his black hair behind his ear and looked Reagan in the eye. “We’ve got some
answers for you.”

Reagan watched Smith, another member of the team,
close the office door.

“I’m not going to like them am I, Lesharo?”

The dark man shook his head swiftly. “It’s a
ship, sir.” He pulled a wide photoflat out of an envelope and handed it to
Reagan.

Though the image was grainy and sparse on detail,
the inky silhouette was sinister and obviously alien.

He tapped a code into his missive. His voice was
tight as he spoke. “I’m putting the bases on alert.”

The day after the festival, Ethan was still
trying to shake the shadow in front of Lucidus from his mind. Ethan looked in
on Polara as she lay sleeping. He felt a chill in the air and looked around
Polara’s little room for an extra blanket.

The room was dominated by the beautiful bed he
and Aria had bought from Winn, a carpenter who had been in stasis on their
ship. Winn, like many others from Ship 12-22, was having a hard time finding
use for his special set of skills on Minea, and since Ethan had been voted into
the Colony Government and had a steady paycheck, he and Aria tried to help out
the other passengers when they could. The bed was made of Minean wood, rich
green and coarse-grained. Carved into the headboard were the most beautiful stars
Ethan had seen since leaving space.

He pulled a blanket from the dresser and tucked
it around Polara. No need to wake her. He slipped out of Polara’s room and down
the hall to Rigel’s room.

Ethan expected to see his son asleep as he peeked
into the next room, but the baby was sitting up in his crib, also one of Winn’s
creations, smiling at his father. Ethan had the uncanny feeling that his
arrival was expected.

He slipped in and picked the little boy up. “We’re
always the first awake, aren’t we, Ri?” he asked. Rigel looked up at him, his
eyes as bright as the stars outside his window. Ethan scooped him up and took
him to the changing table. The baby lay happily. As Ethan pulled a warm little
shirt over Rigel’s head and slipped a pair of bright red pants on him, he
remembered the nearly Olympic feats it had required to dress Polara when she
was this age.

Rigel was different. He lay quietly gazing at his
father as he dressed him. It was hard for Ethan to explain how much he enjoyed
Rigel’s company. After five years as Caretaker of a ship where the other
passengers were in stasis, he still felt the need to connect deeply with other
humans. Though Rigel was behind in walking and talking, he was brilliant at
connection. When he looked at Ethan, it was as if he knew the very depths of
Ethan’s soul. As Ethan took Rigel downstairs to feed him his breakfast, he
sensed the deep calm that the child carried with him.

Aria wandered sleepily into the kitchen and
poured herself a cup of the thick gray milk made from sweetbeans, the main crop
grown by the Food Production Division of Coriol. Ethan smiled at her.

“Sleep well?”

Aria nodded.

Ethan peered more closely at her, to see if she
was telling the truth. Aria, like all the passengers, still dealt with one of
the effects of fifty years in stasis: nightmares.

Aria insisted that her dreams during stasis had
been mostly pleasant. She had relived, in greater detail than she would have
thought possible, her happy childhood. She had flown. She had lived in a
castle. She had lived a thousand dream-lives while she slept through the stars.

But there were dark dreams, too—ones she told
Ethan about in the still of night when he had his arms around her and she was
safe enough to explore them again. She told him they were dreams of loss and
fear, of dark shapes pursuing her through bizarre landscapes.

They were dreams of abandonment, deep loneliness,
and hunger, long and aching. These were the dreams that came to her, even now,
four years after their awakening. Ethan hated that they snatched her from
sleep. Neither of them got enough of it, with small children in the house whose
sleep patterns were still erratic. Ethan himself had a few dark dreams while in
stasis, but they only plagued him occasionally now.

He slid a hand over hers on the table. “Any bad
dreams?”

Aria cast him a bright look that dispelled his
worries. “Nope. I just dreamed I grew a field of wheat here. It was so
beautiful, golden against the blue soil.”

Aria had been a crop geneticist back on Earth,
and there she had developed her own strain of wheat. But she hadn’t been able
to find work here on Minea.

“You should visit Kaia before you go to work,”
Aria said. “Take her some of the new mugs that Luis dropped off yesterday.”

Ethan nodded and checked his missive for the
time. He’d better go if he wanted to have time for that.

***

He stopped in at Kaia’s cottage, the little crate
of mugs under his arm. When she opened the door, her eyes were red and her face
rumpled. She’d had a long night. She didn’t sleep well, a product of years in
the artificial environment of Ship 12-22.

It was still strange to Ethan that his ship had
an official title. They’d started referring to it by its launch and dock numbers
during all the government proceedings that took place after they’d arrived at
Minea, and the title had stuck.

Kaia smiled warmly. “David!” she said.

Ethan blinked, the sting of it hurting him like
it always did, and leaned in for a hug, hoping she wouldn’t catch herself this
time. She was always so embarrassed when she called him the wrong name, and it
was happening more and more often lately.

She didn’t notice this time, though, and she took
the mugs and pulled him into the kitchen for some lalana, the sweet hot morning
drink she indulged in every day.

He sipped it, enjoying the creamy, rich flavor.
Saras Food Production could do amazing things with a sweetbean.

“What’s on your schedule today?” Ethan asked,
trying not to notice the slight shaking of her hand as she lifted one of Luis’s
bright mugs to her lips.

“I think I’ll visit the junkyard. I want to pick
up a few new parts.”

Ethan shook his head quickly, before he could
stop himself. “I don’t know, Kaia. That place is a deathtrap. If that central
pile of junk ever falls . . .”

He could see her annoyance in her eyes, but she
teased it away, her voice light as she said, “You’re right. Maybe I’ll just
stay home and knit a shawl instead.”

Ethan tried to remain stern, but he couldn’t help
but chuckle at her twinkling gray eyes. “Hey, I still have that shawl. You’re a
pretty good knitter.”

“I’m a good robot builder, too,” Kaia said
sternly. “And I will be careful at the junkyard.”

Ethan stood and stretched. “I’ll stop by again. I
guess I’d better get to work for now, though.”

She hugged him. He could barely feel her frail
form in his arms.

“Have a good day, David.” Ethan flinched as he
felt her tense. She had realized it this time, and she didn’t pull away from
the embrace. He knew she didn’t want to look him in the eye.

“I’m sorry, Ethan.”

He stepped back, searching her face and trying to
convey comfort. “Hey, Kaia. It’s okay. Really. It’s fine.”

Her jaw tightened. “It’s not fine, Ethan. I’m
really scared. What if I’m slipping?” She walked a quick circle around the
kitchen, then grasped his hands.

Staring into her desperate eyes, Ethan felt the
old ache of regret over what had happened on the ship so many years ago. But it
was long done, and no amount of regret now would change it.

“We’ll get through,” he said. “This is just another
of our adventures. We didn’t know what we were facing on Beta Alora, or how to
get through it. But we figured it out together. We’ll figure this out, too. You’re
not alone.”

She squeezed his hands tighter and blurted out, “But,
Ethan, what if I forget you? I will be alone.”

He looked at her a long moment, wanting to deny
it, but knowing it could happen, “Then it will be my job to remember you,” he
said, embracing her again and wishing, somehow, that he had better words to
say.

Marcos Saras saw the explosion before he felt it.
A flash, and then the rumbling percussion that he’d come to love. Brighter by
far than the planet Lucidus that everyone was so excited about yesterday, it
meant a new mine shaft, a new vein of glassy Yynium laid bare, and this time, a
new bonus.

Marcos never expected to be mining a planet this
far from the desert where he was raised. He never expected to be this busy, and
he never expected to be this rich.

His mother wouldn’t have liked him saying that,
but it was true. The first three UEG bonuses he’d won and held for his
efficiency in delivering Yynium had made it true. Still, he probably wouldn’t
say it in front of her.

And the bonus the UEG was offering this time,
if
he could produce the purest sample of Yynium by the end of next month, wasn’t
just a measly 2.5 percent. It was also a land grant: the whole of the Karst Mountain
range that lay outside of his city, and all the Yynium in it. This was an
instant monopoly, the ability and permission to extract every grain of Yynium
from what his surveyors were suggesting was a deposit richer than any found on
Minea so far. But even though it lay closest to his city, the six other
companies would be vying for the bonus as well, and if one of them got it,
Saras Company would be hamstrung, blocked from expansion under the karst
towers.

As he watched the cloud of rubble settle over the
opening to the new shaft, he cursed softly. He should have done this last
month, then he would already be on his way to being awarded that land grant.

But he had another plan, one that would secure
the grant for sure. He would meet with his vice presidents, Veronika and Theo,
in an hour and fill them in on it, just as soon as they were back from their
daily checks of the districts.

They were vice presidents, but they didn’t spend
their days in decorated offices attending endless marketing meetings like they
had on Earth. Here in the settlements, VPs ended up doing a lot of assistant
work. It couldn’t be helped. If there was a snag in the production line or a
group of disgruntled workers, Marcos had to have someone he could trust take
care of it. His assistants and managers didn’t have a big enough picture of the
whole operation to make decisions, and his VPs had to be out in the districts
to get that big picture. Every decision had potentially disastrous consequences
and they couldn’t be made haphazardly.

His VPs, though, were anything but haphazard.
Tall, thin Theo Talbot had been the first in charge of Saras Company on Minea.
As soon as Marcos’s father had set up the settlement, he’d returned and left Theo
to run the whole city. Theo had been here for a dozen years: four with Marcos’
father, five running the operation by himself as acting president, and three
after Marcos had come. Theo knew the operation in and out. He could tell Marcos
the names of every manager across the city—in the Food Production District, the
Market District, the Mine, or any of the other districts. He could quote
production numbers for the last ten years off the top of his head. He was
friendly and got along with people. He had an energetic manner and could talk
his way through problems. Marcos could see why his father had picked Theo to
man the operation for so many years.

Veronika Eppes was the opposite. She was cold,
calculating, and efficient. She didn’t let emotion get in her way, and she
dealt with people like tiles in a dragonboard game. She knew where they were
best used and she placed them there. If they weren’t of use, she’d knock them
off the board. Marcos had, more than once, relied on her decisiveness. And more
than once she’d saved them from the mire of Theo’s tendency toward indecision.

They didn’t get the long days in their lavish
offices that vice presidents got back on Earth, but Marcos tried to keep them
supplied with perks. For Veronika that was expensive imported wines, clothes,
and jewelry from Earth. She had a particular affinity for rubies. For Theo, a
custom hovercar, which he’d be driving as he finished up his rounds right now.

The day was calm, and now Marcos could see the
darkness of the new shaft gaping through the settling blue dust. As he watched
it, he was distracted by the beeping of an incoming transmission alert from his
hovercar. He slid into the back seat and tapped a screen mounted at eye level.
The cost of this one luxury, a receiver in his hovercar for Coriol’s single Real-Time
Communicator back at Saras’s Coriol headquarters, would have built his mansion
on Yynium Hill twice over. But his parents insisted that he have it so they
could keep an eye on him—though their supervision had lessened considerably
after he’d earned the company the second bonus. He took that to mean that they
were gaining confidence in him.

Marcos’s father, Dimitri Saras, was suddenly
looking at Marcos from the screen with the level, piercing gaze that was his
trademark. There was no greeting. RTC was expensive, and Dimitri didn’t use it
longer than necessary.

“Are you receiving this in the hovercar? Where
are you?” he demanded. “Why aren’t you at the office?”

Marcos chose which question to answer. “I’m
overseeing the start of a new shaft. We just blasted.”

His father scoffed. “That’s not where the
president needs to be.”

He said
president
with an emphasis Marcos
had grown used to. He knew that for his father, the word was more than a title.
It was an identity. Dimitri had made that clear in every interstellar
interaction they’d had since he left for Minea shortly after Marcos was born.
Marcos had grown up in the shadow of the word “president.” In fact, Dimitri had
sent him to Minea as soon as he walked back into Marcos’s life because he
wanted his son to be a company president, no matter the cost.

Marcos felt his body tense. He wanted to defend himself,
tell his father that he’d been in the office every day for the last three
weeks, explain that Theo said that without some field experience he wouldn’t
make a very good president. But field experience was not something Dimitri
valued. Marcos had wanted to go to college, to have the experiences it seemed
everyone had there: late nights, final exams, learning about fields other than
mining. However, his father had put him on a P5 RST ship anyway, seeing no use
in a boy who already had a job spending valuable time exploring useless fields
of information.

People go to college so they can get
a job,
he’d said.
You have a job.
And he’d sent
Marcos to do it. Now Marcos had been here three years.

“Do you hear me?” Dimitri’s voice was edgy.

“I’m sorry. What?”

“I said, you should be at the office. Something
big is happening on your planet, and I’ve got you a seat in the defense meeting
this afternoon. But it’s not going to come into the backseat of your hovercar.
It’s top secret. You need to be there.” Dimitri had a way of making every
sentence final.

“I’ll be there. I’m heading back now.” He closed
the hovercar door and gestured to his driver. They set off for Saras
headquarters.

“This shaft is important, though,” he tried to
explain.

“Marcos, every shaft is important.”

“But—”

“Don’t interrupt me. You need to learn
delegation. You need to learn division of duties. You need to learn that being
president isn’t about getting in on all the fun. It’s about making sure that
all the parts of your organization are fitting together into a functioning
machine.”

“There’s another bonus up,” he tried to say.

“I’m aware of the bonus. And I expect you to
secure it as you’ve secured the others.” Again, that final tone.

“I will,” Marcos said, hearing the cold edge that
had crept into his own voice. While he had his father on the line, he jumped at
the chance to ask, “Is there a landing date for Serena’s ship yet?” The girl he
wanted to marry was on her way back to Earth from an Interstellar Study trip,
and she should be landing very soon.

Dimitri grunted, closing his eyes in irritation. “Keep
your mind on your work, Marcos. I told you I would let you know of any
developments. If you haven’t heard anything, then there is nothing new.”

“I’m just hoping—” Marcos began, but his father
broke in, changing the subject.

“Where are your VPs?” Dimitri said. “Theo?
Veronika?”

Marcos hated the way he said her name. Even now,
eight years since she’d been put on the P5 with Marcos and they’d both been
sent out of the way, Dmitri’s voice held a salacity that turned Marcos’
stomach. “They’re out on daily checks.”

“Ah. Well.” He could see that Dimitri was
disappointed, and he was glad his mother was not on the call. “You’ll be at
that meeting, Marcos.”

“I will,” Marcos said again.

“Message me when it’s over. I want to know what’s
discussed.” The screen went blank. His father gave no goodbye.

The hovercar stopped at Saras headquarters and
Marcos knew he should go right up to his office, but instead he slipped out to
the south shop to see what progress Cayle was making on the P5.

The sleek little ship looked out of place in the
big shop, surrounded by earthmovers and drill rigs. Cayle tossed him a wave
from atop a twenty-foot rockhammer and Marcos felt a ripple of annoyance.

Cayle must have seen it on his face, because he
hurried down and rushed into an apology.

“Sorry, boss, but Theo says they need that hammer
for the new shaft and if it’s not ready by the end of the day, I’ll be drivin’
it instead of fixin’ it.”

Marcos never acknowledged apologies. He’d learned
that from his mother. Acknowledgment of bad behavior meant its acceptance.

“How long on the ship, Cayle?”

Cayle shook his head slowly. “Well, there’s no
tellin’. I’ve got the grunge cleaned out of the engine, mostly, but I still can’t
get that YEN drive to fire up, and I haven’t had time to machine new rods yet.
With my regular work, it’ll be a while yet.”

Marcos briefly considered, as he did every time
they had this conversation, making the ship Cayle’s full-time priority, but
Cayle was the best mechanic they had, and pulling him off the mine equipment
would raise too many questions. He shook his head quickly.

“Keep working on it. And,” Marcos glanced around
briefly, “keep your mouth shut.”

“I always do, boss.”

Marcos left the shop, crossed the liftstrip, and
walked through the high, glassed-in entryway of Saras headquarters. He stopped
to glance at the rows of windows. They were green with little patches of plants
growing along the edges. These plants were showing up everywhere in Coriol. Marcos
barked at the receptionist to get the cleaning staff in here and make a note to
dock them two hours’ pay. Perhaps that would get them to take a little more
pride in their work. Missing the windows in the front lobby? Sloppy.

He slipped a sweet, hard gar fruit candy in his
mouth and hoped his screens were set up in the office. He had an Interstellar
Communications System recording coming online, and he’d be expected to get his
response to it out within ten minutes after seeing it. And then he had to meet
with Veronika and Theo before this RTC meeting his father had gotten him into
with the Coriol Defense Committee. Marcos walked a little faster.

The screens were set up, and the ICS recording
was just beginning when he sat down in his Earthleather chair in front of the
wide windows that looked out over the heart of Coriol, his city.

The recording was routine. It requested
comprehensive Yynium output numbers for the last quarter. As he entered the numbers,
Veronika opened his office door and leaned in.

“I’m back,” she said.

He nodded. “Get Theo and come back in five
minutes.”

He finished the numbers quickly. It was vital to
keep the UEG happy.

Checking the clock, Marcos saw he had just enough
time to fill Veronika and Theo in before the Defense Committee meeting.
Veronika entered first, and she came behind the desk, as she always did, to
lean against it. Veronika had little use for personal space. Marcos leaned back
in the chair as Theo came in.

Theo always gave him plenty of space. This time,
he gestured the VP forward a bit so he didn’t have to shout the plan down the
length of the office. It didn’t take Marcos long to explain the idea that would
win them the land grant bonus. Theo, as usual, was resistant.

“You want to blast a shaft down from our legal
land and tunnel under the Karst Mountains? We don’t even know for sure what’s
down there. We only have the core samples, which were illegal, too, by the way.
Why would we risk it?” Theo asked, the tone of authority that Marcos hated
sneaking into his voice.

Marcos felt Veronika’s hand on his shoulder. She
had moved behind him, to face Theo. “Because he knows that not doing it is a
bigger risk. If someone else gets the grant, then we might as well get on the
P5 and go home now. There won’t be enough Yynium left to support a third of
this city. The veins we’re mining are running out right now.”

“But don’t you see that if we’re caught we lose
it all anyway?”